Twestival: Social Help with Social Media

Charity: Water is a social help organization established in 2006 by Scott Harrison in an effort to provide water for one billion people with no access to clean water.

This organization managed to collect more than 8 million dollars from 30,000 people in a short amount of time. With this fund, 1240 water projects were brought to life in 14 countries and provided 600.000 people with clean and drinkable water.

Twestival is Water’s social media organization. Scott Harrison has the idea of gathering the needed fund and public awareness by Twitter in 2009 that initiates Twestival. Tweet-Meet-Give is their self-explanatory slogan that summarizes their goal very well.

Twestival’s very effective globally. Mashable and Blurb are some of its global sponsors. Their first Twestival was organized out of the Twitter community in February 12, 2009 in 202 cities that collected 250.000 dollars as charity money drawing the attention to the global water problem.

Twestival İstanbul is organized by Duygu Saylam. Twestival Istanbul’s goal is the same as the global one: bring Twitter users together and raise fund. There is one difference though. The money raised in Istanbul will be donated to the Child Foundation or to the Turkish Heart Foundation. With the first organization, Istanbul team managed to raise 455 dollars. Even if this amount sounds low, it is not that bad in comparison to the other cities. Istanbul Twestival 2 will be held on September 12. The organization team is looking for the location right now. Attendees are Twitter users, their friends and corporate or private individuals that we can reach by the media. You can follow Twitter account for upcoming developments.

There will be another organization in Izmir, too. Ugur Aydogdu is responsible for the organization in Izmir. 300 hundred cities in the world are participating in this organization.

We are encouraging Twitter users in both Istanbul and Izmir to participate in this event whose income will be donated to a local foundation.